Review: Edmonton Opera's production of Lilies 'great theatre' with plenty of appeal

Zachary Read, left, as the Young Simon and Jean-Michel Richer, right, as Vallier in Edmonton Opera's production of Kevin March's opera Lilies (Les Feluettes), which opened at the Jubilee on Saturday.Nanc Price / Postmedia

Edmonton Opera’s production of Lilies, written by Canadian librettist Michel Marc Bouchard and Australian composer Kevin March, opened on Saturday evening at the Jubilee, and has a lot going for it.

The theatrical qualities of the opera, premièred in Montreal in 2016 and subsequently seen in Victoria, are considerable. The spartan sets by Guillaume Lord are visually arresting. The lighting, originally designed for Montreal by Martin Labrecque and revived by Julie Basse, is atmospheric, with some wonderful and discretely used special effects. The stage direction, originally by Serge Denoncourt and revived by Jacques Lemay, is exemplary, propelling the story, especially in the handling of the chorus.

The cast, most of whom took part in the opera in Montreal and Victoria, is a strong one, palpably both committed to and involved in the drama. The sense of ensemble in a piece revolving around characters who have known each other intimately, is compelling. Gordon Gietz as the bishop and Gino Quilico as the Old Simon, the most experienced members of the cast, give a strong vocal foundation, and the overall standard, both acting and singing, is very high.

The subject matter is topical today even though Les Feluettes, Bouchard’s celebrated play on which the opera is based, is 30 years old. The story is set in a prison in 1952, where the prisoners stage an opera-within-an-opera. It replays to a visiting Catholic bishop the events of 1912 that had led to the lifelong incarceration of the innocent Simon, thanks to the duplicity of that very bishop as a young man.

The cast is all male, and central to the opera is the love affair between Young Simon (Zachary Read) and Count Villers (Jean-Michel Richer). The main theme of the work is that love between two men can be just as powerful, just as moving, and just as natural as any other love.

This LGBTQ theme is not the first for an opera, but it is the first for a Canadian (and Australian) opera, so that in itself confounds opera stereotypes while bringing the genre into a central contemporary theme. Added to that is the frisson of a love scene where there is male nudity — a rarity in any opera. Men playing serious rather than comic women’s roles (there are two here) are equally uncommon.

With the compelling staging, the persuasive acting, and the subject matter, this is an entertaining theatrical evening, one clearly enjoyed by the audience on opening night.

Therein — for me, at least — lies the problem of this new work. It does come across primarily as pure entertainment. One can understand that in the Quebec of the 1980s the play, dealing with then largely taboo subjects, needed the distancing of being set in the closed community of a prison (where gay activity is rife anyway, given the lack of alternative sexual activity).

Jean-Michel Richer, left, as Vallier and Zachary Read as the Young Simon in Edmonton Opera’s production of Kevin March’s opera Lilies (Les Feluettes), which opened at the Jubilee on Saturday.Nanc Price /
Postmedia

The result is that — unless one has experienced the homoerotic milieu of a single-sex community, its tensions, passions, and contrasts with the outside world — the audience is a spectator, being entertained by these events rather than being involved in them. Time and again I have heard the comment about this opera that one forgets that it portrays two men in love — it is simply a love story.

That in itself is commendable, and we need to be reminded that for much of the world, from Russia to Uganda to Indonesia, it isn’t commendable. But there is a surprising lack of dramatic conflict in the libretto, and opportunities for a 21st century opera — such as physical abuse by Catholic priests (it’s a very anti-Catholic opera) or the sad and tortured results of marriages of conveniences by homosexual men — are watered down in favour of the emphasis on the beauty of love between two men. Surely in Canada in 2017 that message has thankfully been long learned.

Adding to the sense of entertainment as paramount is March’s music. It has one strong quality: the vocal lines largely follow the patterns of speech. They move at a different pace than spoken drama, and thus are better suited to expressing passion and love than straight theatre — it’s what opera does well.

Otherwise, the score is essentially an accompaniment to the theatrical action: musical theatre or a musical rather than opera. The music is very conventional, and singularly devoid of character, apart from pastiche (a main recurring theme is uncannily like one in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges). It too has very little tension (the short moments of loud interruption are effects rather than integrated commentary), its musical gestures remind one of film music, and the orchestration is singularly unimaginative.

None of that matters in terms of the piece, for it clearly fulfils its secondary role. But it does not explore or add to any psychological drama or conflict. It simply — and in these terms effectively — accompanies the story.

The net result is an ardent evening. It’s great theatre, which will appeal not only to opera lovers, but equally to Edmonton’s LGBTQ and theatre communities.

But it’s poor opera, not a patch on Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, similarly set in a prison, and similarly treating a controversial subject, which Opera Nuova presented so effectively in 2015.

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